Hajra Naz
Text-based AI assistants have become a genuinely hot market. Several players are competing for users’ attention right now. That includes Instinct, Wajo, Town, Ollie, and Meta’s Muse agent. Muse launched just last week. Each of these AI agents vies for user attention and to complete tasks. Instinct, based in San Francisco, stands out as one of the most popular options. The company has attracted huge investor interest. It’s reportedly valued at $10 billion.
Instinct’s popularity may grow even further now. The company added a new calling feature recently. This lets your AI agent place calls and act as a personal concierge. Meta’s Muse, another serious contender in this space, added a similar feature too.
Instinct founder Noah Shinn announced this new feature on X. He explained what the buzzy startup’s new calling feature can do. It’s called Instinct Concierge. The feature can book restaurants that don’t accept online reservations. It can also get you on your dentist’s cancellation list. It can even sort out problems with your cable bill. According to Shinn, this feature is rolling out in early access first. The company plans to expand access to all users eventually.
Instinct may be shipping quickly, but Meta’s Muse AI assistant is keeping pace. Muse also just gained the ability to call U.S. businesses directly. According to Meta, this feature will first roll out to specific users. Those users are the ones who ask Muse to make a call. This essentially works as a feature request system. Meta explained that whenever Muse launches new features, early access goes first to people who ask Muse about them directly.
These new calling features arrive at a notable moment. Several rivals had been touting calling capabilities as an advantage over Instinct. Now, with Instinct’s own Concierge feature rolling out, that advantage has disappeared. All these companies now sit at parity on this specific front.
Last week, Instinct rolled out another feature too. The company added email addresses, letting Instinct handle account sign-up and management directly. Instinct also introduced a new networking capability. Users’ assistants can now contact other people’s assistants. This helps manage certain tasks collaboratively. Users add trusted contacts to a network to enable this feature.
Both Instinct and Muse have seen strong traction over recent weeks. Instinct raised $350 million last month. That round valued the company at $2.5 billion. Reportedly, the company is now in talks for additional funding. Sources suggest a potential $1 billion raise at a $10 billion valuation. Investors are showing heavy interest in text-based assistants overall. Specifically, they’re drawn to assistants that can navigate different platforms on users’ behalf.
Analytics firm Sensor Tower shared interesting comparative data recently. Muse actually outgrew the earlier Meta AI app launch within its first few days. The app garnered more than 730,000 downloads in the U.S. For comparison, the Meta AI app saw 707,000 downloads in its first five days after launch. Muse even reached the No. 2 position on top charts at one point.
